Bugzilla

There has been a change of behaviour for the action "View Message Body as" (which is toggling the preference `mailnews.display.html_as`).

In Thunderbird 102, a change of this preference only affected newly opened messages, not already opened ones. In Thunderbird 113 (maybe earlier), this now affects all opened messages.

It is no longer possible to view plaintext by default and only enable html view for individual messages.

Even though I understand the rationale to make the menu selection always reflect the reality, it does remove the option to enable html view on a per-message basis. The user could switch it to html view and then switch back to plain text view before loading another message. I agree that this workflow is not straight forward, but there is an add-on to simplify the switching process, and its existence shows the general need for such a view-this-message-as-html-on-demand workflow.

I would like to propose the following:
1. Do not reload already opened messages when the preference is changed, but merely return to treat it as a default value for newly opened messages.
2. Rename the "View Message Body As" menu entry in the global mail-menu in a way to indicate it refers to a default.

3. Rename the "View Message Body As" menu entry in the message menu (behind the dropdown in the message header area) in a way to indicate it refers to this message only.
4. Make that menu entry not toggle the global preference, but only change the view mode of this one message (we probably have to store the default value as a local value into the message window when it is first opened and only use that for rendering).

I could then make the per-message-state available to add-ons through the messageDisplay API and allow add-ons to toggle the display mode of the currently viewed message.

There has been a change of behaviour for the action "View Message Body as" (which is toggling the preference `mailnews.display.html_as`).

In Thunderbird 102, a change of this preference only affected newly opened messages, not already opened ones. In Thunderbird 113 (maybe earlier), this now affects all opened messages.

It is no longer possible to view plaintext by default and only enable html view for individual messages.

Even though I understand the rationale to make the menu selection always reflect the reality, it does remove the option to enable html view on a per-message basis. The user could switch it to html view and then switch back to plain text view before loading another message. I agree that this workflow is not straight forward, but there is an add-on to simplify the switching process, and its existence shows the general need for such a view-this-message-as-html-on-demand workflow.

I would like to propose the following:
1. Do not reload already opened messages when the preference is changed, but merely return to treat it as a default value for newly opened messages.
2. Rename the "View Message Body As" menu entry in the global mail-menu in a way to indicate it refers to a default.

3. Rename the "View Message Body As" menu entry in the message menu (behind the dropdown in the message header area) in a way to indicate it refers to this message only.
4. Make that menu entry not toggle the global preference, but only change the view mode of this one message (we probably have to store the default value as a local value into the message window when it is first opened and only use that for rendering).

I could then make the per-message-state available to add-ons through the messageDisplay API and allow add-ons to toggle the display mode of the currently viewed message (in addition to the already existing menu entry behind the dropdown in the message header area).